Sunday Morning

At stake on Election Day: The reality of the presidency

By John Dickerson

/ CBS News

At stake on Election Day: The reality of the presidency

Presidential campaigns can get abstract, petty and diversionary. But the reality of the presidency hits the instant a president takes the oath.

In 2009, as President Barack Obama gave his first inaugural address, he carried a secret in his jacket pocket. A terrorist threat loomed over the ceremony; if the attack took place, he was prepared to pull out evacuation instructions and read them to the nearly half-million standing before him on the National Mall.

For voters who have not yet cast their vote, here's what the president you pick will face:

The next commander-in-chief will control thousands of nuclear warheads, and command troops in more than 150 countries. They will confront Russia and China — adversaries working in tandem to dismantle the international order created and nurtured by America. 

Russia threatens NATO countries; China threatens Taiwan. America is pledged to protect both, and so the next president will be.

In the Middle East, there are multi-headed challenges, as President Joe Biden learned.

Those are the known threats. It is almost certain the next president will face a surprise.

In the 2000 campaign, the topic of terrorism was mentioned only once and in passing in the presidential debates. It dominated the next two decades.

In 2016 the son and brother of a president tried to focus the electorate on the key question about the presidency: "The next president's going to be confronted by an unforeseen challenge; that's almost certain," said former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. "It could be a pandemic, a major natural disaster, or an attack on our country. … Because that's the question. It's not the things that we're talking about today. It's the great challenge that may happen."

The pandemic did arrive. The next president might need the temperament and focus to manage another one, or a truly catastrophic cyber-attack, or a financial crisis that craters the global economy.

At home, we've heard a lot about the border, high prices, and abortion. In addition to those, the next president will face long-looming problems that have dogged successive administrations:

  • Chronic price increases in healthcare, education and housing that block access to the American Dream.
  • Artificial intelligence is about to cause major disruptions in the job market.
  • The size of the debt and deficit could overwhelm the economy if not addressed.
  • The damage from climate change is becoming irreversible.

You can't order troops to solve these problems. It will take vision, patience, and a commitment to action for which you might not get credit.

Americans are electing more than just a person. They are electing values, temperament and character that the next president will inject into the executive branch, which has a million civilian employees (4,000 of whom will be hired by Tuesday's winner). 

The idea of the American Experiment is that voters will understand all of this and use common reason to pick the best man or woman to face these challenges.

For most of America's history that was a given. But the system is now under attack by misinformation, from without and within, including by Donald Trump, who built his campaign on the lie that he won the last election.

So, the first test of the next presidency will come before the oath is taken … in how a candidate manages victory, or in how they don't.

       
Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Chad Cardin. 

       
Also from John Dickerson: 

John Dickerson

John Dickerson is the anchor of "The Daily Report with John Dickerson," CBS News chief political analyst, senior national correspondent and a contributor to "CBS Sunday Morning." He also serves as an anchor of CBS News election coverage and political special reports.

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